Green party leader Eamon Ryan remains hopeful that the traditional Leaving Certificate exam will go ahead this year.
However, the Transport Minister has warned people not to book foreign holidays this summer as he believes travel will not fully reopen before the end of the year.
As the Irish Examiner report, it comes as Cabinet is expected to sign off on a raft of new measures and restrictions on travel this morning.
However, it is not expected that any decisions will be made on a reopening of schools at today's crunch meeting, as Education Minister Norma continues discussions with teaching unions and other representative bodies.
Asked if the State exams will take place, Mr Ryan said: "The first priority is getting special needs students back but the second priority is getting Leaving Cert students back in school, and we will be able, in my mind, to do a written Leaving Cert."
He said the Leaving Cert is "the fairest system" and it would be good for the mental health of students to hold it.
"I think it's unlikely that there will be a complete opening up of travel."
Foreign holidays
Mr Ryan said new quarantine measures expected to be approved by Government, which will apply to those who arrive without a PCR test and people coming from particular countries, will "take a number of weeks to put in place".
He said there had been around a 90 per cent fall in the numbers of people travelling over the last nine months since the pandemic.
Mr Ryan added that Nphet had been asked about the possibility of moving to a zero-Covid approach, however, they advised that this is "unworkable".
He warned people against booking foreign holidays this summer, adding that most international travel will be stopped for the remainder of the year.
"Even if we get completely vaccinated - and please God we get that kind of cover - we live in a world where this virus is rampant and variants will come. In those circumstances, I think it's unlikely that there will be a complete opening up of travel.
"I don't think we're going to be flying in anything like the numbers we would have historically, there may be exceptions to that, but the vast majority of ordinary flights are not going to take off," Mr Ryan told Newstalk Breakfast.
